


The Cats Cradle

by Elie



Series: The Cats Cradle [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Character Death, Don't copy to another site, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Whump, also there isnt really much selina/bruce action, and selina have feelings, its for the suspense, no tim im really sorry :(, selina and dicks relationship is so interesting i had to write this, selina takes care of dick and im evil, theres a reason i put choose not to use archive warnings just so y'all know, they do have a conversation though, this work has an alternate ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-08 10:31:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19105315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elie/pseuds/Elie
Summary: Selina just wanted to steal a pretty diamond, instead she finds a dying bird.





	The Cats Cradle

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is like my baby, i love exploring dick and selina's relationship! ALSO this has an alternate ending because i wrote two endings and then couldn't decide which one i liked the most, the alternate ending is posted separate (part 2 of this series) 
> 
> thanks to @Siryygray for the help with both editing, grammar and the title! also for listening to all my rambling

She is careful as she makes her way through the empty street. There has been yet another Arkham Breakout. Most people have already vacated the grim and dirty main road of Gotham. Smart people. Selina didn’t catch all about what had happened. The blonde news-lady with the pretty lipstick had said something about the Riddler with a dash of Scarecrow. Fun.

For her, it had been the perfect timing.

The Gotham Historical Museum had managed to get their hands on a very special, and very big, diamond. She has had her eyes on it since they first announced on TV that they would be showcasing it in the main hall. The owner had been bragging about it on Gotham Today of all things. How someone had willingly loaned it to a museum in Gotham, she could not comprehend. Rich people and their carelessness, she could only shake her head over it. Then use it for her own gain, of course. 

The guards of the museum might be on high alert because of the breakout, but she isn’t worried about them. Their training is.. not that great. They're only middle-class men only trying to make a living, and she is a master of her craft. It seems the museum never learns to hire better guards even after all the break-ins. Maybe that is the very reason they can’t afford too.

It’s an especially gloomy night in Gotham. The fog laid over the city is like a thick blanket, and there's no clear sky in sight.

It is almost a dream come true, a perfect heist. Her only worry is Batman, who has a knack of turning up out of nowhere when she least wants him too. The fog is a favorite weather of his to practice his over-dramatic entrances. She has put all her trust in the breakout to slow him down enough so that he will arrive only for her to have already snagged her prize. 

Through the fog, she can just barely see the majestic wooden doors of the museum. It is quite a wonder that the museum keeps rebuilding. Especially in that same expensive and historical style. She has lost count of every time it has gotten ruined in some attack or intrusion. There's been quite a few. Another reason they can not afford better guards, even after gracious donations from Wayne Enterprises.

It seems like the battle has already been in this particular street. There is a crashed and abandoned car, and parts of the pavement are broken or missing. There is, thankfully, no pools of blood, it would be a shame for her boots to get dirty. She isn’t wearing those that work well with anything wet, like water, or blood.

There is nothing to be heard either, besides distant rumbling. It is in no doubt some rogue ruining some building, and Batman trying to stop them, which means she is alone for now. 

She wonders what Bruce will say once he sees the news of the stolen diamond. Hopefully, it will be after he has put the escaped villain back into their cell. When everything has quieted down. Her little jewel theft will not be covered in the news as much as the Arkham Breakout, yet she has no doubt the bat will get ahold of it anyway. He has a way of knowing about all crime that happens in Gotham. She is still trying to figure out exactly how he does it.

Bruce will know it was her, but he won't come after her. They have an understanding of some sort. She has, after all, been in his kitchen sipping tea with Alfred Pennyworth. Whatever it is they have, must have been going on for years by now. Since Batman had his first Robin, running around in small green shorts and pixie boots. He would not break their weird relationship now unless she did something unforgivable. Something which she is not planning to do, she would rather avoid the wrath of the bat. 

There is not a person in sight, but Gotham is covered in fog tonight, so that doesn’t mean there isn’t anyone hiding somewhere. Her goggles do help a little though as she slips them on and secures the strap. The tech in them makes things a tiny bit clearer. 

She goes to cross the street and head towards the back of the museum. It is so pathetic-level guarded that she’s considered sending the poor museum some notes for consideration on how easy it is to break into. 

A horrible sound interrupted her trek, freezing her in place. A pained gasp, a sound she wishes she didn’t recognize. A sound she wishes she hadn’t heard so many times before, enough times to know what it is. It sounds like a dying animal. It’s a dying human. 

Her eyes linger on the vent she was planning to use as an entrance into the museum. She thinks about all the money the diamond will give her. Funds that will go to help that family she has hoped to help out for a while now. 

Another pained sound, more like a sob, comes from the alleyway on her right. She walks up to it and tries to peer in, but she can’t see anything through the dark and the fog. Even if she squints, the only thing she can make out is some lumpy form on the ground a couple of meters away. It might be a body, but she isn’t sure.

She sighs and gives the museum one last longing look as she starts walking into the alleyway. Maybe it will be some criminal that she can make a fast process with. Perhaps a civilian she can call an ambulance for and then disappear again. That is if the hospital even has any ambulances that aren’t already in use considering there is a breakout.

After all her time on the street, she's sure to have her back against the stonewall of the apartment building at all times. She doesn’t feel like being bothered by some low-life ambushing her from behind right now.

Her foot hits something, and she steps over a bag of trash. The lump she had seen before. It’s rather concerning that her mind had initially jumped to the conclusion of it being a body instead of abandoned garbage. 

Whatever had made the sound is further into the alleyway. She knows because the person is obviously trying to be quiet, and failing. They must have heard or seen her coming, could have been when she had rustled the trash by accident. Their breathing has picked up and they’re shuffling around.

What first falls upon her eyes as she walks into the dead-end of the alley is the unconscious body of some goon. The man is still breathing, but bleeding from a head wound and not giving any sign of waking up any time soon. It looks like the wound is superficial, so whoever hurt him had no intent to kill. They had only wanted to incapacitate him. Yet she does not envy the killer headache he in no doubt will be sporting once he wakes up. For good measure, she slips out a pair of spare handcuffs from her bag and secures them on him.

She lets her eyes travel to the corner, where the apartment-building meets the brick wall ending the alley. There is someone there, sitting, no, leaning, against the wall. A black arm with blue finger-stripes laid protective over their stomach.

It’s one of the bat-brats. None other than Nightwing, the first one of Batman’s proteges.

He is making some awful gurgling sound. When she moves closer she can see that there is blood dripping from his mouth and chin down onto his chest. It’s slicked onto the arm he is holding over his abdomen too. He's practically sitting in a puddle of it.

She could leave him, considers it for a second - he isn’t her responsibility. The bat himself, or any of his annoying sidekicks, are most likely already on their way. She could leave, and finish her job in time to pop by some fast food shack for a late dinner. 

As she steps closer, just to look, she tells herself, she steps on something. It crunches under her foot. She curses herself and her own lack of awareness. She is supposed to know better. The sight of the usually smiling Nightwing so beaten and broken has rattled her more than it should.

When she crouches down, she sees that what she’s stepped on is some kind of electronic device. With closer inspection, she can see it’s a com-unit. She has seen Bruce use it to call off his kids often enough, those times when they have met on rooftops without really planning too. She has even seen him throw his own off in a haste the few times they have made it to his bed. This one, in contrast to Batman’s black one, carries a blue earpiece. It was probably already broken before she stepped on it. There is certainly no saving it now.

Crap. There goes her diamond heist. She can’t leave the kid here not knowing if he has called for back-up or not. If there is one thing she can not be responsible for, it’s Nightwing dying. That is one of those things the bat would never forgive.

A painful sounding cough brings her attention from the com-unit back to the former Boy Wonder. He is trying to cover his mouth with the hand not cradled over his stomach, but blood is still bubbling through his fingers. Internal bleeding. He’s in the eleventh hour. She has no idea how long he’s been there, judging by the amount of blood he’s lost - too long.

He is slumping over, about to fall down onto the unforgiving ground. Without thinking, acting on instinct, she is moving, running. She catches his shoulder before it hits the pavement, and lowers him down. 

At first, he’s resisting, he may be fearing that she is someone who's come to hurt him. A bat in peril, no matter which one, is something many criminals dreams of stumbling upon. His attempts to escape from her grip is shaky and feeble. He wouldn’t have stood a chance against the weakest of low-life criminals.

“It’s just me,” she hears herself saying as she pushes her goggles off to rest on the top of her head. She hopes the younger man will calm down once he can see her face.

Half of Nightwings domino mask is missing, and a blue eye blinks open to look at her. He furrows his brows in confusion.

“Selina?” he stutters, and she uses her sleeve to dry some blood off of his chin. Her boots are already a lost cause. They got seeped with blood the moment she stepped in to save the boy - which he still is, just a boy - from crumpling to the ground.

“D-did Bruce-” his words are interrupted by yet another harsh cough. He spits more blood, it lands both on himself and the pavement.

“Did Bruce send you?” he asks again, once his breath has calmed down enough from the coughing fit. There’s a glimmer of hope in his eyes. She knows it is a hope that Batman knows what has happened. A hope that his dad is coming. Perhaps a newfound hope that he will survive this.

She smiles sadly at him and shakes her head. If Dick is as bad off as he looks, the skin not covered by blood stark white, and Bruce knew, he would have already been there.

“I was in the neighborhood, tending to other business,” she settles on replying. If the situation was any different, if Richard wasn’t half-conscious and bleeding out, he would be prodding her about said “business.” The boy has always been too curious for his own good. 

When he was younger and still Robin, he had been a teen filled with crude remarks. He would always question her. She had thought his look on the criminal world naïve, he saw it like everything was black and white. Why the bat never had corrected it, she hadn’t understood.

Back then, Dick had not understood the relationship between his mentor and herself. Most likely because she was a known criminal. It could be he still didn’t understand now, but how he looked at her had still changed. There was no venom in his eyes anymore whenever they would stumble upon each other. That’s including that time they’ve never spoken about when Selina had come stumbling out of Bruce’s room at around 4 am. At the same time, a drunk and underage Dick had stumbled up the stairs to his room. They had looked at each other, nodded, and then gone their separate ways.

Besides, that was before the Bat had all the other little bratlings. Before Dick had stepped up as his own hero and as a big brother to the newer bats. It was before a lot of pain had come to the bats’ makeshift family. Before Richard’s eyes had been forced open to reality despite Bruce’s attempts to shield him from it. 

Now, Dick’s eyes are slipping shut. His blinking is slowing as if it takes too much energy to keep his eyes open.

“No falling asleep,” she says as she shakes him by the shoulder. She feels bad when he winces, but his one visible eye opens once again, looking a bit clearer than before. She knows she needs to keep him talking, at least until the bat shows up. If he does.

She doesn’t wanna think about what will happen if Batman shows up too late and finds her leaning over his dead son. She can't think about him not showing up at all. She doesn’t want to live in a world where Nightwing is dead, again, either. Both for the world’s sake and for Bruce’s.

“Can you list your injuries?” she asks instead of voicing her fears and to grab Dick’s attention again.

“Hmmm..” Dick starts, and it looks like he is struggling to find words.

“Concussion,” he says, after half a minute, and Selina can’t help but snort. It earns her a small bloody grin from the teen, and she counts it as a win.

“I messed up my leg, it hurt like a bitch at first, the pain has dulled now though,” he continues. It’s the longest sentence he has said since she found him. She looks at his legs and oh - yeah. She had missed it in the worry of oh god he is coughing up blood but his right leg does not look good at all. It’s wrangled in a way she didn’t think a foot could ever be. It will be a long time before Nightwing is up and walking again, if ever. She doesn’t tell him that. 

“Anything more?” she asks switching topic, knowing he has missed something quite vital.

“There is also a bit of a stab-wound in my abdomen. Maybe some internal bleeding,” he says, pretending it’s no biggie. The waver in his voice tells Selina otherwise. The boy is worried too. “That doesn’t hurt too much either anymore” he continues. Now he doesn’t even bother to hide the shakiness in his words.

“I guess that’s not a good thing,” he looks up at her as he says it and she is surprised by how coherent he looks. Their eyes meet. God, there are visible tears in the eye not covered by the domino. Selina is not prepared to deal with that.

She opts not to say anything, again, she doesn’t know which words to use. So instead she tries to pry his arm away from the stab-wound. She needs to take a look at it, and then apply more pressure. Dick’s arm is weak, and there is barely any resistance as she lifts it up off the wound.

It ‘s.. not pretty. Far from. It looks deep, no surprise considering how the kid has been coughing up blood. Luckily there doesn’t seem to be anything left of whatever inflicted the wounds still in there. It hasn’t stopped bleeding, though it’s not going as heavy as it looks to have been earlier. She has no idea if that is good or bad. Good right? The blood is staying inside? Or does it mean there is too little blood left? The uniform around the wound is torn. Unnatural pale skin is shining up at her from where the blood has yet to get to. Usually, Dick is one of the tannest in his family with his darker skin and all.

She drags her leather jacket off her shoulder and puts it over the stab-wound. She’s going to miss it, it was a personal favorite. She’ll make the boy wonder buy her a new one if he survives this. When. When he survives this. Dick gasps at the sudden pressure, both arms clawing at her to stop her, but they are still too weak. Selina thinks to herself that it’s good the boy still feels the pain because then there is still hope.

“Can you manage to hold it there, while I take a look at your leg?” she asks and doesn’t wait for an answer before putting both of Richard’s hands over the jacket again.

“Apply pressure,” she commands when his hands just fall limp over it. She sees the muscle tighten in Dick’s arms, and she figures that is as good as she is going to get. 

She takes one look at the leg and knows she can’t do anything with it. It’s twisted in an off-putting way. If she were to rip off the tight costume covering Dick’s leg, which by some miracle is still intact, she knows she would be looking at bone. The suit is probably the only thing keeping the bleeding in. It should be set straight and held secure, but she can’t do any of that here. Not alone. Especially not when Dick is barely awake and coherent as it is. The risk of sending him into shock, or him bleeding out even faster, is too big.

The risk of Dick getting any lasting nerve damage is one she is willing to take, as long as he survives. She hopes the boy will agree, as daring flips off of rooftops and acrobatic moves fills her thoughts, and moves away from the leg.

“It is bad, isn’t it?” Dick asks when she settles beside his upper-body again. She puts her hand back on the jacket covering the wound and leans over to apply more pressure. He grits his teeth when she puts her weight on it. She only nods, not one for sugar-coating anything.

Silence, or as much silence as Dick is capable of with his rattling breath and badly concealed whines, falls over them. She is thinking of something to say, to keep Dick’s attention on her. Dick is shaking. The temperature has been falling steadily for the whole night, and it doesn’t seem to be stopping. Even her, with her suit fully intact, is starting to feel the chill. Could it be that some ice villain had broken out of Arkham too? It wouldn’t surprise her. 

“Do you have a way to contact Batman? Or anyone else?” she asks. She refuses to believe that the com is the only way of contact Bruce has given his little sidekicks. Maybe she should have asked about it when she first arrived at the scene, maybe Bruce would already be here then. It is too late to think about that now. 

“Emergency beacon,” Dick rasps. “In my belt, it should have gone off automatically when my vitals dropped. My hands..” he once again has to stop to cough and his concentration is slipping. “My hands... too much blood, too slippery,” his sentences aren’t really sentences anymore. They are more like mumbled words, each one sounding more painful to say then the next. It’s so wrong. Dick is usually always talking, he’s known as the chatty one of his family. He always seems to be teasing his siblings or taunting whichever villain he is facing. Dick is one of the few people she has ever seen without a glimmer of fear tease Batman. 

She looks at his utility belt, there is blood where Dick most likely had tried to find the emergency button. If it had gone off or he managed to push it, someone must be on their way. Then there’s someone who knows that Dick needs medical attention, stat. Someone who will relieve her of this awful duty she has stumbled upon. 

There is a faint blue light coming from under a shield in the belt. She sees it when she tips her head slightly sideways, parallel to Dick’s upper body. The light is only visible when looking downwards towards the feet of the wearer.

“Is it the one glowing? A blue color?” she asks. Dick says something, she can’t decipher it.

“If it’s..” he starts, “it’s blue?” he asks instead. His brows are once again furrowed.

She nods, “yes.”

“Shit,” he whispers. He leans his head back, and he looks up at the sky which still is nothing but fog.

“It’s.. not..,” he mumbles, his eye is closed and the single lens of his domino that's left has become a thin slit.

She taps his face, rather hard. His eye blinks open again, although they look too hazy.

“Huh?” he asks.

“The emergency beacon, it’s blue. Does that mean it hasn’t gone off?” she asks, dread filling her stomach. Dick doesn’t have much time.

“Emergency?” is Dick’s answer, he looks confused, resembling more the young boy she once knew and not the man he has become.

“Blue means safe,” he then says, confusion still evident on his face. He looks like he is barely awake, his skin is cool to the touch when she taps his face again when he looks to be drifting off.

“Your emergency beacon, we need to turn it on, now,” she tells him when he looks up at her. She gives him as much of a stern look that she can muster. He needs to hold on long enough to tell her how to activate it. Then she has at least done everything she can to save the boy.

“Dad will be here,” Dick says, his one visible eye half open. He doesn’t seem to completely be with her anymore, and she doesn’t know what to answer his little statement with. 

She regrets not taking Bruce up on that emergency com-unit he had offered her a few months back. She had been too afraid to say yes, even after all these years. Coms are too easy to trace. Too big of a commitment. 

“Dick, your emergency beacon, how do I activate it?” she tries to keep her words clear, hoping they are filtering through Nightwings ears. One thing at a time, she tells herself. 

“‘’s jus’ a button,” Dick mumbles, head lolling a little to the side. She grabs both sides of his face and forces him to look up at her.

“Which button?” she asks, but there is no response. Dick blinks up at her, but it looks like he isn’t actually seeing her.

“NIGHTWING!” she yells and shakes him a little, not even sorry for jostling him and the pain it causes. His eye focuses on her again, he blinks.

“Where is the emergency button?” she asks, not losing eye contact.

“Beside the l’ght, just - small,” he whispers, a drop of blood escapes the corner of his mouth and makes its way down his chin. She regrets it, but she has to let go of Dick’s face. Has to let their eye-contact go.

She looks at the utility belt. With the help of the claws on her gloves, she manages to pry the protective shield covering the blue light off. She pushes her goggles down again, and they help her get a closer look. There is, in fact, a small button placed half a centimeter from the little light. She pushes it in, hard.

For one too long second, her heart is in her throat.

The light switches to a glowing red.

“Hey, it’s red now, that means it's activated, right?” she asks, still examining the little beacon. It’s a steady red, not blinking, just like the blue light had been earlier. There is no sound emitting from it. Then again, on the battlefield, anything playing sound might attract unwanted attention.

She looks up at Dick’s face again when there is no response. His head is to the side, mouth slightly open, and his eye is closed. His arm is completely limp now, laid over the leather jackets weak attempt to stop the bleeding from his gut.

Dread is filling her stomach. It starts at the bottom of it and fills up her lungs and throat and makes it hard to breathe. For a few seconds, it feels like too long, she is frozen. She wishes she had turned earlier, gone the other way, followed her original plan. Then she wouldn’t be sitting here. There wouldn't be a bleeding and limp Nightwing by her side. Her maybe boyfriend's oldest son would not be dying in front of her.

She puts two fingers on his neck, between the gap of the high-necked Nightwing suit and his chin. There is a pulse, but even her whose only medical knowledge comes from the street can feel that it is too damn slow. When she stares at his chest she can see that he is still breathing. His chest is still moving up and down, if only ever so slowly. It is too shallow, the movement too small.

She doesn’t know what to do now. This isn’t the first scene like this she has seen. People have died in front of her before. She has seen people laid dead and forgotten on an unforgiving ground too many times before.

But this is a kid she watched grow up. A once ten-year-old who she teased for his choice of uniform. A twelve-year-old she ate ice cream with, while they waited for Batman to show up. A teenager barely turned sixteen who she taught about sexual harassment when Bruce was lacking the emotional understanding to do it himself.

She knows she shouldn’t move him, considering his injuries, his bad leg, but she can’t let him lay there either with his head resting on a pillow made of dirt and asphalt. Medical reasons be damned, he is not going to die thinking he is alone.

A whine escapes his lips, even if he doesn’t wake up when she grabs his shoulders and drags him onto her lap. Both of them are damp, from both the moistness of the fog and all the blood which should've been inside Dick’s body. The inside of her jacket, still laid over Dick’s wound, is dark, filled with blood, and doing little purpose now. The wound itself is barely bleeding anymore. She does not want to think about what that means.

She softly hushes him when another whine escapes his lips. She uses her teeth to drag one of her black gloves off, and combs her now naked fingers through his hair, away from his face. The hair has grown stiff and matted because of all the blood and grime. 

He is still breathing. His poor heart is still beating, desperately trying to pump blood through his system. The skin of his hand feels too cold when she touches it.

His breath hitches. His face falls. It goes slack. The furrowed brows ease.

Her heart feels like it is going to burst out of her chest. She holds her breath. 

He takes a shuddering breath, and so does Selina.

Now he is completely limp in her arms, more so than before. He isn’t tightening his muscles in pain. His body feels more like jello than muscle and bone. When she looks at his face, the pained grimace is gone.

He is slipping.

She looks at the red light on his belt, which is still attached around his body. She wants to take it off, it's digging into her hip. It can’t be comfortable for Nightwing either to be laying on it. But she knows the bats. They have their traps, especially on their weapons. She is not up for an electric shock, even if she could probably manage to dismantle it if she had the time. She has seen Bruce do it often enough. 

She wonders why the damn emergency beacon hadn’t gone off in the first place. Nightwing's vitals must have been far from good before she even arrived. They have only deteriorated since. She cradles him a little closer as a gust of wind follows the alleyway and sends chills down her spine.

When she lets her head dip back, and stares up at the sky, she can see that the fog is finally lifting. The night sky is almost peeking through.

She hopes she will see the blur of a cape up on the rooftop.

There is nothing of the sort.

She uses the glove she took off to wipe the blood off of Dick’s face. Half of the domino mask is still on. With gentle movements, she manages to peel it off. There’s no point in him wearing half a mask anyway, anyone who knew Dick would recognize him with only one eye covered. The area where the mask once sat is red and irritated. Some blood has seeped in under it while it was on, and now it's dry and crusted. She wipes that away too.

She looks down at the young man’s face. He is still handsome, even when pale and supporting a busted lip and a darkening bruise on his left chin. He would have made a great cat if he wasn’t already a bat and Selina liked to have sidekicks. His jaw is sharp, and his body lithe and smooth while still muscular and strong. She thinks his Nightwing uniform resembles Catwoman’s more than Batman’s. The play on his body he uses is much like her own, she has thought about it many times before. It had been one of the reasons she had agreed to sit down and have that talk with him, all those years ago. Plus, watching Bruce squirm had just been too amusing

She and Richard could have been a good team if faith was different. She could have molded him quite nicely. 

He is so young. She wonders how Bruce, who she knows sees all the little bats as his children, can let them do this. How can he let them run around, risk their own life, on a daily basis? How many will have to die before he puts an end to it?

Then again, none of the bats ever seems to stay dead.

If she is too loose Nightwing tonight, she hopes he isn’t the exception to the rule. Or do they all only get one resurrection? She doesn’t know the laws of death, who works in more mysterious ways than Batman himself.

Dick is deathly still in her arms. She would be sure he was dead if she didn’t have two fingers on his pulse. It is a miracle that he is even alive, considering the blood-loss he has suffered. But then again, Bruce has always complained about how stubborn his eldest is.

She hopes he gets the chance to complain about it again.

The roar of a powerful motor a couple of blocks away makes Selina tighten her grip on Dick. She tries to scoot them both backward further into the shadows, to safety. The man from before is thankfully still unconscious on the floor. She does not want to deal with some enraged criminal while Nightwing is still dying on the ground. 

Dick was lucky before, when the only one all his not so subtle noise attracted was her. They might not be so lucky if someone else were to stumble upon them now.

A heavyset of boots falls from, seemingly, the sky. When she looks up from the alleyway floor, it’s into the glass visors of the Red Hood. Before saying anything to her, he is turning the man she found in her entrance to the alleyway over. He kicks him slightly as if to make sure he is out.

“Better to be on the safe side, right?” the Red Hood’s metallic voice says while turning to look at her again.

She knows that the Red Hood is supposed to be on the good side now and that it's Jason Todd under there. She knew him, at least kind of, back when he was Robin. It was before he died and became.. whatever this in front of her is. Still, she is unsure. She has never been one to throw trust around. He must sense her hesitation because the next thing he does is reach back, behind his head, and with a swift click take off his helmet. 

“I got the emergency alert,” he says when she makes no move to speak first. He isn’t looking at her face anymore though, or at her at all, but at the man still lying limp in her lap. His brother.

He steps forward and crouches down in front of them.

She lets her grip slacken a little, to let Jason get a good look off his dying brother.

“They got him good, huh?” he whispers.

“He’s lost blood, a lot of it, and his leg-” Selina says. Jason’s eyes move from the drenched leather jacket to Dick’s broken foot. “- his leg’s ruined, plus he’s got a concussion,” she continues.

“His breathing hasn’t been right since I got here. Jason,-” The Red Hood flinches when she uses his real name, and she files it away for a later time.

“He’s going to die,” she says.

Jason shakes his head, “Bruce is on the way, he won’t let him die,” he argues. Funny, because she is pretty sure Bruce was too late to save Jason. Then again, Dick had only a few minutes ago said something along those lines himself. He must have known he was on his deathbed as he proclaimed his belief in the bat. 

Yet a glimmer of hope fills Selina, even if she doesn’t want it too. Bruce, Batman, is on his way. He is going to save Nightwing, do what Selina couldn’t. She won’t have to bear this much longer.

With help from Jason, they lay Dick down between them. Some irrational part of her wants to keep on holding him, just in case Dick slips away. But Jason wants to look over Dick himself, wants to be sure of what he’s dealing with, and Selina cannot deny him that. Instead, she settles on holding one of Dick’s white, almost blueish, hands tight in her own.

-

Dick's heart stops beating one minute and thirty seconds before Bruce arrives.

When Batman runs into the dirty alley, the sky is clear above him and the moon is providing him with a pale shimmery light. The first thing he sees is Jason. And then - Jason, desperately trying to revive his older brother. Dick. 

There is no sight of Selina, who had left the moment Richard’s heart stopped. Bruce didn’t even know she was there until Jason told him later. 

-

Four weeks later, and Selina has heard nothing. She’s unsure if that’s good or bad. There hasn’t been anything in the underworlds rumor mill either. No one has seen or heard from Nightwing. She can’t say she’s surprised. There have only been wild guesses about the vigilante's sudden disappearance. Nothing real or from a believable source. 

The bat-sightings have been scarcer than normal too. She knows they've been doing their usual patrols though, minus Nightwing. She’s seen them. Every time she’s spotted them, she hasn’t been able to muster up the courage to confront them. 

There hasn’t been anything on Dick Grayson either, besides a small notice of him traveling abroad. She hasn’t seen anything on the rest of the family either, besides the usual gossip tales of romance and heartbreak. If only real life was that easy.

Now she’s standing up on a rooftop, their rooftop. It is still a couple of hours until the sun will start to make its way up.

It is an olive branch if there ever was one. She is in his territory.

She hears Bruce before she sees him, the ruffle of his cape, the sound of his boots as he walks over the rooftop. He isn’t trying to hide, he wants her to know he’s there. She wonders if he’s trying not to spook her? It’s funny, as she is the one who initiated contact.

Selina doesn’t turn to look at him as he walks towards her. He comes up and stands by her side without a word.

They stay like that, looking over Gotham, for a couple of minutes. The moon is shining just like how it did when the fog lifted that night.

“You left,” Bruce says, finally breaking the silence.

Selina finds the power to look up at him. He has the cowl on, but even with his face half hidden, she can see that he looks tired. His uniform looks a little worse for wear like it hasn’t been on his mind, or anyone else’s, to patch up the small rifts in it.

“There was nothing more for me to do,” she answers because it is the truth. She could not bear to sit there and do nothing, and only look on as Jason Todd tried to revive his only older brother.

Her stomach hurts with a pain that doesn’t come from anything she’s eaten. It fills all of her. She wants to ask, to know. The teen has been on her mind too much the last few weeks. She has to ask now, or she will never have the courage again.

“The boy?” she is suddenly all too aware of how quiet it is. How it is as if even Gotham is holding her breath, waiting for Batman to reply.

Bruce shakes his head.

Selina feels sick as she tries to force the tears away from her eyes. Some part inside of her knew that it must have gone like this. Still, she had held onto a sliver of hope. The hope Jason Todd had given her, hope in the caped crusader, in that he would arrive on time. She grips the railing off the roof, her hands hidden under her new pair of gloves. Her last ones had been drenched by blood beyond saving. Just like Richard. 

She almost wishes she hadn’t ever asked. It would be better living in uncertainty until the news broke for the rest of the world, rather than being told by Bruce himself like this. By Bruce, and his broken voice.

“Only the family knows,” Bruce says. It is obvious he is working very hard to keep his voice unemotional and detached.

“Did he say any-, what was, I -,” it’s painful to hear Batman stumble over his words.

Selina wishes she had something meaningful to say to him. That Dick had proclaimed his love for his family or found the words to make his death easier on everyone - but he hadn't. His death, like most deaths in their line of work, was filled with pain. His last moments awake had only been filled with desperation to survive.

“I.., he just.. said where the button for the emergency beacon was,” she says. She's surprised when she manages to keep her voice steady.

Even if she knew Dick when he was Robin in his childhood and early teen years, she had little to do with him once he grew up into a man. Still here she is, crying over his death.

“He.. he did ask if you sent me, to get him, when I arrived,” she adds as an afterthought, unsure if she should say it or not. She doesn’t know if it will do more bad than good.

“The vital-reader, in his suit, it malfunctioned. It.. broke, while he was fighting, judging by the timestamp it stopped transmitting,” Bruce’s voice is filled with bitterness. “I didn’t even know how bad it was before I got there, and all that time he just... laid there,” his voice comes close to cracking. It hurts to hear this. It hurts to hear Batman unravel.

She thinks about telling Bruce that his son wasn’t alone. She wonders if she should tell him that she held his son in his last moments. That even if his family wasn’t there he at least must have known that someone was there. Someone held his hand as his heart stopped. 

Maybe she should tell Batman that his son had faith that he would arrive on time. That he held on to the belief, even as his life was slowly ebbing out in time with the blood pouring out of his gut. That Dick had still, at a point where he must have known he was going to die, believed his dad would come for him. 

She can’t bring herself to get the words out. It hurts too much, and she doesn’t know if it will help Bruce anyway. Bruce has a way of turning everything that happens into something that was his fault, his mistake. It would be too easy for him if Selina were to tell him some of Dick’s last words now. She doesn’t know how to say it in a way he will understand. 

It seems to be a theme with the two of them, never finding the right words.

When it becomes clear to Bruce she has nothing more to say, that she has no more comments on how much Dick suffered in his final moments, the man leaves. He jumps over the ledge, grapnel gun in hand, and once again disappears into the night. 

A dark cloud covers the moon as Selina makes her way down from the rooftop. Her new boots make almost no sound as she moves down the stairs. As she slips into the shadows again, it feels like Gotham is suffocating from holding her breath waiting for the first Robin to come back.

**Author's Note:**

> ALso @Siryygray explained the title like this; “cats cradle has been associated with innocence vs corruption and situations that become increasingly complicated” and i just found that very very perfect and fitting
> 
> i am very thankful for any kudos and comments!


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